I cannot speak of what I’ve seen:
the smell of bleach is on those scenes,
and faintly, on each memory’s breath,
a subtle scent of loss and death,
with hints of joy and hope between.
I hear the dripping fat, I dream
of crackles in the kerosene
that sizzle ’til there’s nothing left;
I cannot speak.
I stand aside, and watch, and lean
a while. I wait as the new green
begins to sprout amidst this death;
a garden is a grave, reset,
that in each’s season prayer and sweat
writes of the sacred and obscene
I cannot speak.
04 MAY 2017
